The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
1–10 of 225 posts
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#2This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#3This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.
I would be totally fine using such a phone for almost everything I do. The only big gap would be using Sweden's identification app BankID and the money transferring app Swish. Unless these were ported to the phone, I would unfortunately lose one of it's most important functionalities for me.
Of course I could just have an Apple/Android phone sitting at home for such purposes, but it is definitely less convenient.
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#4This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.
I'm not convinced. I'd love a Linux phone but there must be some standard that ensures apps are easy to develop and the apps must grow significantly for this to catch on. Otherwise it'll be just like Linux on the desktop. It'll become a mess of 15 different standards and apps devs will not bother with that.
I really hope it'll work out, but we'll see.
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#5I want the PinePhone to work. The Librem too. In fact I had preorders for both. I canceled them looking at the performance.
They’re excellent toys. Great effort to ship such a difficult product. But if your phone is going to struggle with running things besides terminal, it’s not going to be a great daily phone.
I’d love them to be on par with the latest Android flagships in terms of power. Cost is not an issue. I just want to be able to actually use Linux on a phone, rather than just run it.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Windows side of things. Windows 10x looked really promising on top of the Surface Neo, but both seem to be shelved. Now the closest alternative is handheld devices like the GPD Win 3, but that lacks LTE unfortunately. No ditching Android just yet.
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#6This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.
I would be totally fine using such a phone for almost everything I do. The only big gap would be using Sweden's identification app BankID and the money transferring app Swish. Unless these were ported to the phone, I would unfortunately lose one of it's most important functionalities for me. Of course I could just have an Apple/Android phone sitting at home for such purposes, but it is definitely less convenient.
While I'm not entirely sure on the specifics, this is where Anbox can hopefully create a workable Android runtime layer. While it would be a bit overly optimistic to assume that "secure" authentication type apps would work, it could help with adoption for people like me who are missing that one vitally important app required to make the PinePhone a daily driver.
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#7Recently went to a security conference and really wanted a secure low-feature phone to coordinate with friends and keep up with email/web... Speed and features don't matter, don't need games or even video. Can't imagine I'm alone... is this a niche market for a linux smartphone to take off?
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#8This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.
I'm not convinced. I'd love a Linux phone but there must be some standard that ensures apps are easy to develop and the apps must grow significantly for this to catch on. Otherwise it'll be just like Linux on the desktop. It'll become a mess of 15 different standards and apps devs will not bother with that. I really hope it'll work out, but we'll see.
I'm curious, what apps do you use day to day that need to be native?
For me, 99% could easily be web-based, which makes "mobile web" the standard, and not necessarily "linux-phone."
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#9This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.
KDEConnect is supported in KDE/Plasma-based distros. Work is in progress to add it to Gnome/Phosh. KDEConnect is definitely a killer app!
Can't speak for the other distros, but Mobian/Phosh has reached a point where it's usable as a primary phone. Tons of work from the community has brought battery lifetimes up from ~1 hour to the point where it lasts me the day under normal use. Firefox is usable, and most every piece of software I need has a workable counterpart.
That said, the experience is still quirky (think c.a. 2000 linux on desktops). Most things work, but the final mile still requires a decent amount of poking at config files and trawling wikis. Doable, but not everyone's cup of tea.
(Posted from a pinephone)
Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life
#10In general I really like that this is a low-end device, affordable. I feel like phone prices have gotten totally out of control, but meanwhile we have very low cost pretty excellent chips available. It feels like ARM has let their low end cores languish, which seems to be changing, and I'm hoping we see some natural, logical follow ups to this phone in ~2023.
That said, Snapdragon 845 is inching towards becoming a good general purpose Linux platform, with decent upstream support, and some phone platforms supported. Alas, like the rest of the Android ecosystem, only like 2% of the phones made with this chipset have unlocked bootloaders & will be able to be good long term devices that are well supported by mainline kernels. The rest of these devices are already running out the end of their support life, either no longer getting security updates or real soon about to end support.
I feel like once a device manufacturer no longer offers security support, then is when Right to Repair laws have a moral, ethical, legal obligation to step in & demand the bootloader be unlocked, so it's possible for owners to maintain their devices, given that the manufacturer wont.